Something Extra

     The Highpoint Rocket Raid 1542 has two small external connectors that are used to with the Rocket Mate 1000. The Rocket Mate 1000 is an external enclosure that will mount any typical parallel ATA hard drive. The supplied power converter will provide the unit with the DC power required to operate the installed hard drive. The front of the RocketMate 1000 has an LED to display hard drive access status.

     Installing the hard drive requires that the two screws be removed from the rear of the Rocket Mate. A small drawer has the necessary electrical and mechanical mounting points to secure the hard drive. Only typical 3.5" hard drives will fit into the Rocket Mate. Once the drive is mounted to the drawer, slide it back into the enclosure and tighten the two screws.

     All connections are made at the rear of the rocket mate. Each end of the cable has a different size and shape connector. The end that goes to the Rocket RAID card looks like a miniature USB while the end that goes to the Rocket Mate looks like a FireWire connector. To the left of the data connection is the power connector, and to the left of that is the master On/Off switch. The external Serial ATA functionality has been trademarked by Highpoint and referred to as e.SATA™

     The Rocket Mate 1000 is also compatible USB 2.0 and IEEE1394 Firewire. Transfer speeds will vary according to the interface and the hard drive installed.

     The Rocket Mate in conjunction with the Rocket Raid makes backup and data portability faster and easier. This is by far one of the most innovative external USB enclosures I've used to date. The only cable provided is for the e.SATA™,  but finding connections for the Firewire ports shouldn't be difficult. Another bonus is that since the e.SATA™ is handled by the BIOS and treated just like an IDE connection, you will not need any special boot disks to obtain use of the e.SATA™ drive in a DOS mode.

     Overall, the Rocket RAID controller with the adapters and external enclosure form a very stable and performance based union. We have experienced no array corruption that has been found with other ATA adapters, which deserves the award of recommendation by itself. Factor in the outstanding performance of the controller and the wide interface compatibility of the external enclosure and the entire assembly easily deserves the Club Overclocker Recommended, Seal of Approval!

The products you have seen reviewed here are available at www.atacom.com